Afterlives of the Rich and Famous (27 page)

It shocked me that, as we neared the top of the stairs, I was suddenly hit with a wave of panic so strong and overwhelming that, I promise you, I would have turned and run as far and fast as my legs would carry me, if I’d been there alone. Nick recorded my description of the dread I was feeling about whatever was waiting at the top of those stairs, and at my insistence we stopped long enough for me to say a prayer and put a circle of the white light of the Holy Spirit around the three of us to protect us before we stepped onto the narrow balcony and opened the first door.

I was instantly transfixed by the nightmare of horrifying images inside that small room. There seemed to be people everywhere, all of them in black, Goth before it became fashionable. They all had blank, chalk-white faces with hollow eyes and the darkest red lips. They were talking to each other unintelligibly, in a hushed, droning monotone. Three of them were flailing around the room, arms waving wildly, insanely falling into everyone in their path. Four others were lying limp and crumpled on the floor. One of them was slowly and deliberately cutting his arm, letting his blood drain into the glass he was holding, and then passing the glass around the room for everyone to drink from. As each of them took a sip, they swooned into a mirthless euphoria as if they’d just shared some kind of grotesque Communion.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear, until finally Nick’s voice penetrated what felt like a frozen trance, yelling, “Sylvia! Listen to me! Get the hell out of there! Now!” Apparently, according to the gauges strapped all over me, my temperature was spiking in that ice-cold room, I was being assaulted with so much electromagnetic energy that I was on overload, and my pulse was racing out of control. I knew what had held me so psychically captive was my certainty that I’d just witnessed a crowd of earthbound spirits, dark and futile, trapped in a perpetual rite of drugs, despair, and death.

Nick pulled me out of the room and slammed the door, and he and Chuck bolted toward the stairs. My impulse was to bolt right along with them, but I couldn’t ignore the energy that was pulling me to a second door just a few feet away. My hand was already on the doorknob when Nick yelled from the bottom of the stairs, “Where are you going?”

“We have to look in here before we go,” I called back.

He and Chuck were with me in seconds, protective and concerned for my safety as always, and they were right behind me as I opened the second door and stepped into the pitch-black room. Once my eyes had adjusted I could make out a large horizontal shape that looked as if it might have been an oversized couch against the far wall, but I caught my breath when I realized that no, what I was looking at was a gleaming wooden casket, open to reveal the earthbound spirit of Bela Lugosi himself, wrapped in his signature cape, lying in the satin lining of his coffin, eyes open and empty.

He slowly sat up, and he looked directly into my eyes, as cold and godless as any ghost I’ve ever seen. “You weren’t invited,” he said in a hollow voice.

“No, I wasn’t,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry for the intrusion.”

We stepped back out onto the balcony and closed the door. Nick and Chuck were visibly shaken—they hadn’t seen or heard what I had, but they’d heard my reply to the lifeless life in that room and felt the dark hopelessness of the energy we’d just confronted. We didn’t say a word as we walked back down the stairs to the courtyard. We were all thoroughly depleted, and we sat by the dry fountain for a long time before I finally turned to Nick and said, “Okay. Now you can tell me about Bela Lugosi.” He told me the story you’ve just read, and we held hands and prayed for those poor lost souls before we left.

From Francine

Bela is no longer earthbound.
A very short while ago, maybe twenty years in your time, he freed himself, but he turned away from the Other Side and went to the Holding Place instead.
He hasn’t yet reincarnated.

Chris Farley

A
ctor and comedian Christopher Crosby Farley was born on February 15, 1964, in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the five children of Thomas Farley, owner of a paving company, and homemaker Mary Anne Crosby Farley. The family was close-knit Irish Catholic, and Chris received his early education in Catholic schools. He graduated from the Jesuit Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1986 after focusing his studies on theater and communications. His professional comedy career got its start at Madison’s Ark Improv Theater and Chicago’s Improv Olympic Theater. But it was at the famed Second City Theater in Chicago, where Lorne Michaels, creator of television’s landmark series
Saturday Night Live,
discovered Chris Farley and signed him to the cast in 1990.

Chris was one of
Saturday Night Live
’s most versatile and innovative comedians, creating a variety of characters and performing hilarious impersonations of such celebrities as Dom DeLuise, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Carnie Wilson, and Rush Limbaugh. He was also part of a group that came to be known as the “bad boys of
SNL,
” which included cast mates David Spade, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, and Rob Schneider, whose off-stage pranks were often as notorious as their onstage comedy.

Between 1992 and 1995 Chris began making cameo appearances in such films as
Wayne’s World, Coneheads,
and
Billy Madison
. When his
SNL
contract ended after the
1994
–
95
season, he devoted all his professional energy to films, costarring with his
SNL
cast mate and friend David Spade in the successful comedies
Tommy Boy
and
Black Sheep.
His “bankability” was rewarded with a lead role in the equally successful
Beverly Hills Ninja
in
1997
.

Sadly, by now Chris, following in the footsteps of his equally gifted idol John Belushi, was battling severe problems with obesity, drugs, and alcohol. He sought treatment more than a dozen times before attending rehab in 1997, again unsuccessfully. Production of his last film,
Almost Heroes,
was delayed more than once due to his declining health and progressing addictions, and he was in shockingly tenuous shape during his final
Saturday Night Live
guest appearance on October
25, 1997
.

Chris Farley, at the age of thirty-three, died in his Chicago apartment on December 18, 1997, from a cocaine- and morphine-related heart attack. His funeral in Madison was attended by more than five hundred friends and family members, who gathered to honor his far too brief life.

From Francine

Chris was distraught and disoriented when he returned Home.
Not even the large crowd of friends—including John Belushi and a tall, husky man I believe was his maternal grandfather—could comfort him.
A spirit cannot fully experience the sacred peace and exhilaration of life on the Other Side when such pervasive hollow depression has separated it from its faith, its cognitive abilities, and its capacity for joy, and Chris’s Spirit Guide immediately took him to the Hall of Wisdom, where he was cocooned.

And then something happened that’s very rare here. Chris emerged from being cocooned, quickly realized that he’d been too eager to resume his life to stay as long as he needed, and was cocooned again, with more intensive therapy this time, particularly from one of his closest friends and advisors at Home, a Sikh guru named Amar Das.
By the time his second cocooning ended, Chris was fully healed and had evolved into his thirty-year-old visage: a slender, six-foot-tall man with long, jet black hair, and delicate, almost beautiful features.

It will come as no surprise to everyone on earth who knew Chris well that he is a highly advanced soul, a giving, loving light who is much beloved on the Other Side.
He is still a devout Catholic, and he’s resumed teaching his brilliant classes in world religions.
He is also a gifted and very popular classical dance teacher and swimming instructor.
He and John Belushi love performing rock-and-roll with a variety of other musicians, including Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, with Chris on drums; and Chris’s open-air house on the plains of what corresponds to your North American Midwest is home to any of his world religion students who are in early preparation for new incarnations.

Several hours before Chris’s father’s body died, Chris retrieved his spirit, escorted him through the tunnel, and brought him Home, where he was cocooned as well.
Chris and his father, Tom, were brothers in Switzerland in the late
1600
s and deeply devoted to each other, and Chris spoke often of how he felt as if, by remaining obese despite the threat it posed to his health, he could somehow make his equally obese father feel less inappropriate.
Tom will return to Chris’s house with him when he emerges from the cocooning chamber and resume his work as a film historian.

Chris has no plans to reincarnate, but he does visit his mother and his friend David Spade often.

Eva Gabor

E
va Gabor, the beautiful, utterly delightful actress often referred to as the “talented Gabor,” was born on February 11, 1921, in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, Major Vilmos Gabor, a jeweler, and his wife, Jolie, were blessed with three daughters—Zsa Zsa, Magda, and Eva. Eva was a born performer, working as an ice skater and cabaret singer after graduating from the Forstner Girls Institute in Budapest. She and her mother and sisters immigrated to the United States at the outbreak of World War II, and Eva eventually made her way to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. She was quickly signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures and made two films in 1941,
Forced Landing
and
Pacific Blackout
.

After supporting roles in several movies in the
1940
s, Eva finally attracted the critical and popular attention she deserved in the
1950
Broadway production of
The Happy Time
. She was inexplicably passed over for the film version, but returned to Hollywood anyway and resumed her movie career, most notably in
The Mad Magician
with Vincent Price and in
1958
’s Best Picture Oscar winner,
Gigi,
directed by Vincente Minnelli. Her charm and irresistible sense of humor made her a popular television guest as well, especially on such classic game shows as
The Match Game, Password,
and
Tattletales
.

It was in 1965 that she truly captured the hearts of the American public, when she debuted as Eddie Albert’s wife on the CBS series
Green Acres
. Her business acumen inspired her to capitalize on her popularity during the five-year run of
Green Acres
and her long overdue “name value” by forming her own wig company, Eva Gabor International, which continued to thrive long after the series ended.

While Eva’s older sister Zsa Zsa was busy making headlines with her brash, contentious behavior and her lengthy string of marriages (the total currently stands at nine), Eva was living a comparatively peaceful life, with only five husbands and one headline-making encounter with police. In her case, Eva was the victim. In 1964, she was beaten by two gunmen who broke into her Miami apartment and stole her $25,000 diamond ring. (The robbers were ultimately arrested, but the ring was never recovered.)

After her fifth marriage ended, Eva bought and settled into an exquisite home near Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills with her five beloved dogs, and for many years she was the devoted companion of her great friend Merv Griffin. She remained close to her mother, Jolie, and her sister Magda, who were living two hours away in Palm Springs by then, but had a difficult, on-again, off-again relationship with Zsa Zsa. It was a source of irritation to Eva that she was frequently mistaken for Zsa Zsa, particularly when the two of them were so different in spirit and temperament, and that irritation laid the groundwork for a story Eva delighted in telling about herself.

There was a swimming pool in the secluded backyard of Eva’s Beverly Hills home, and Eva was dutiful about swimming laps every morning, in the nude, wearing a large sun hat to protect her alabaster skin from the sun. One morning while she was in mid-lap she was overcome with the feeling that she was being watched. Sure enough, out of the corner of her eye she spotted two workmen from the property next door who’d made their way to the fence to spy on her as she swam. Finally one of the workmen, unable to contain himself, yelled out, “Hi, Eva!” And without missing a single stroke Eva cheerfully called back, “It’s Zsa Zsa!”

Eva loved to work, delighting in the voice-over career that began in 1970 with
The Aristocats
and continued through
The Rescuers Down Under
in
1990
, and it was also in
1990
that she happily returned to the screen for the two-hour CBS
Green Acres
revival movie.

In 1995 Eva went on vacation in Mexico and, in a freak accident, fell into her bathtub and broke her hip. She was flown back to Los Angeles and admitted to Cedars Sinai Hospital, suffered respiratory failure, lapsed into a coma, and, just two weeks after she fell, died of pneumonia on July 4. The youngest Gabor was survived by her mother and two sisters—in fact, Jolie was never told of Eva’s death, because it was agreed by those who were closest to the family that she wouldn’t survive the shock and grief of losing the loving, attentive daughter who brought her as much joy as she brought to everyone else who knew her.